 Chapter 7 A Survey of the Anti-Chamber In this chapter we propose to make a detailed survey of the objects in the anti-chamber and it will give the reader a better idea of things if we make it systematically and do not range backwards and forwards from one end of it to the other, as in the first excitement of discovery we naturally did. It was but a small room, some 26 feet by 12 feet, and we had to trade warily for, though the officials had cleared for us a small alleyway in the center, a single false step where hasty movement would have inflicted irreparable damage on one of the delicate objects with which we were surrounded. In front of us, in the doorway, we had to step over it to get into the chamber, laid a beautiful wishing cup shown on plate 46. It was a pure semi-translucent alabaster, with lotus flower handles on either side, supporting the kneeling figures which symbolize eternity. Turning right as we entered, we noticed, first, a large cylindrical jar of alabaster, next, two funerary bouquets of leaves, one leaning against a wall, the other fallen, and in front of them, standing out into the chamber, a painted wooden casket, see plate 21. This last will probably rank as one of the greatest artistic treasures of the tomb, and on our first visit, we found it hard to tear ourselves away from it. Its outer face was completely covered with gesso. Upon this prepared surface, there were a series of brilliantly colored and exquisitely painted designs, hunting scenes upon the curved panels of the lid, battle scenes upon the sides, and upon the ends representations of the king in lion form, trampling his enemies under his feet. The illustrations on plates 50 to 54 give but a faint idea of the delicacy of the painting, which far surpasses anything of the kind that Egypt has yet produced. No photograph could do it justice, for even in the original, a magnifying glass is essential to a due appreciation of the smaller details, such as the stippling of the lion's coats, or the decoration of the horse's trappings. There is another remarkable thing about the painted scenes upon this box. The motives are Egyptian, and the treatment Egyptian, and yet they leave an impression on your mind of something strangely non-Egyptian, and you cannot for the life of you explain exactly where the difference lies. They remind you of other things too, the finest Persian miniatures, for instance, and there is a curious floating impression of Benotso Gotzoli due, maybe, to the gay little tufts of flowers which fill the vacant spaces. The contents of the box were a queer jumble. At the top there were a pair of Russian papyrus sandals, and a royal robe, completely covered with a decoration of beadwork and gold sequins. Beneath them were other decorated robes, one of which had had attached to it upwards of 3,000 gold rosettes. Three pairs of cord sandals elaborately worked in gold, a gilt headrest, and other miscellaneous objects. This was the first box we opened, and the ill-assorted nature of its contents, to say nothing of the manner in which they were crushed and bundled together, was a considerable puzzle to us. The reason of it became plain enough later, as we shall show in the following chapter. Next, omitting some small unimportant objects, we came to the end, north wall of the chamber. Here was the tantalizing sealed doorway, and on either side of it, mounting guard over the entrance, stood the life-size wooden statues of the king already described. Strange and imposing figures these, even as we first saw them, surrounded and half concealed by other objects. As they stand now in the empty chamber, with nothing in front of them to distract the eye, and beyond them, through the opened door, the golden shrine half visible, they present an appearance that is almost painfully impressive. Originally they were shrouded in shawls of linen, and this too must have added to the effect. One other point about this end wall, and an interesting one, unlike the other walls of the chamber, its whole surface was covered with plaster, and a close examination revealed the fact that from top to bottom it was but a blind, a mere partition wall. Turning now to the long west wall of the chamber, we found the whole of the wall-space occupied by the three great animal-sided couches, curious pieces of furniture which we knew from illustrations in the tomb paintings, but of which we had never seen actual examples before. The first was lion-headed, the second cow-headed, and the third had the head of a composite animal, half hippopotamus, and half crocodile. Each was made in four pieces for convenience in carrying, the frame of the actual bed, fitting by means of hook and staple to the animal sides, the feet of the animals themselves, fitting into an open pedestal. As is usually the case in Egyptian beds, each had a foot-panel, but nothing at the head. Above, below, and around these couches, packed tightly together, and in some cases perched precariously one upon another, was a miscellany of smaller objects, of which we shall only have space here to mention the more important. Thus, resting on the northernmost of the couches, the lion-headed one, there was a bed of ebony and woven cord, with a panel of household gods delightfully carved, and, resting upon this again, there were a collection of elaborately decorated staves, a quiverful of arrows, and a number of compound bows. One of these last was cased with gold, and decorated with bands of inscription and animal motifs in granulated work of almost inconceivable fineness, a masterpiece of jeweller's craft. Another, a double compound bow, terminated at either end in the carved figure of a captive, so arranged that their necks served as notches for the string, the pleasing idea being that every time the king used the bow, he bow strung a brace of captives. Between bed and couch there were four torch holders of bronze and gold, absolutely new in type, one with its torch of twisted linen still in position in the oil cup, a charmingly wrought alabaster libation vase, and its laid resting as cue, a casket, with decorative panels of brilliant turquoise blue faience and gold. This casket, as we found later in the laboratory, contained a number of interesting and valuable objects, among others a leopard skin priestly robe, with decoration of gold and silver stars, and gilt leopard head inlaid with coloured glass, a very large and beautifully worked scarab of gold and lapis lazuli blue glass, a buckle of sheet gold with a decoration of hunting scenes applied in infinitesimally small granules, a scepter in solid gold and lapis lazuli glass, plate 23, beautifully coloured colorets and necklaces of faience, and a handful of massive gold rings twisted up in a fold of linen, of which more anon. Beneath the couch resting on the floor stood a large chest made of a delightful combination of ebony, ivory and red wood, which contained a number of small vases of alabaster and glass, two black wooden shrines, each containing the gilt figure of a snake, emblem and standard of the tenth gnome of Upper Egypt, Aphrodite topolus, a delightful little chair with decorative panels of ebony, ivory and gold, too small for other than a child's use, two folding duck stools inlaid with ivory, and an alabaster box with incised ornamentation filled in with pigments. A long box of ebony and white-painted wood, with trellis-worked stand and hinged lid, stood free upon the floor in front of the couch. Its contents were a curious mixture. At the top, crumpled together and stuffed in as packing, there were shirts and a number of the king's undergarments, whereas below, more or less orderly arranged upon the bottom of the box, there were sticks, bows and a large number of arrows, the points of these last having all been broken off and stolen for their metal. As originally deposited, the box probably contained nothing but sticks, bows and arrows, and included not only those from the top of the bed already described, but a number of others which had been scattered in various quarters of the chamber. Some of the sticks were of very remarkable workmanship. One terminated in a curve, on which were fashioned the figures of a pair of captives, with tied arms and interlocked feet, the one in African, the other in Asiatic, their faces carved in ebony and ivory respectively. The latter figure, an almost painfully realistic piece of work, is shown on plate 70. On another of the sticks a very effective decoration was contrived by arranging minute scales of iridescent beetle wings in a pattern, while in others again there was an applied pattern of variegated barks. With the sticks there were a whip in ivory and four cubit measures. To the left of the couch, between it and the next one, there were a toilet table and a cluster of wonderful perfume jars in carved alabaster, c-plate 22. So much for the first couch. The second, the cow-headed one, facing us as we entered the chamber, was even more crowded. Resting precariously on top of it, there was another bit of wood, painted white, and balanced on top of this again, a rushwork chair, extraordinarily modern looking in appearance and design, and an ebony and redwood stool. Below the bed, and resting actually on the framework of the couch, there were, among other things, an ornamental white stool, a curious rounded box of ivory and ebony veneer, and a pair of gilt cistra, instruments of music that are usually associated with Hathor, the goddess of joy and dancing, plate 23. Footnote. These are two of the attributes of Hathor. There are many others. End footnote. Below the centre space was occupied by a pile of ove-form wooden cases containing trust ducts and a variety of other food offerings. Standing on the floor in front of the couch there were two wooden boxes, one having a colaret and a pad of rings resting loose upon its lid, a large stool of rushwork and a smaller one of wood and reed. The larger of the two boxes had an interesting and varied list of contents. A docket, written in heretic on the lid, quotes 17 objects of Lapis lazuli blue, and within there were 16 libation vases of blue finance, the 17th being found subsequently in another part of the chamber. In addition, thrown carelessly in, there were a number of other finance cups, a pair of electrom boomerangs mounted at either end with blue finance, a beautiful little casket of carved ivory, a calcite wine strainer, a very elaborate tapestry woven garment, and the greater part of a corset. This last, which we shall have occasion to describe at some length in Chapter 10, was composed of several thousand pieces of gold, glass and finance, and there is no doubt that when it has been cleaned and its various parts assembled it will be the most imposing thing of its kind that Egypt has ever produced. Between this couch and the third one, tilted carelessly over onto its side, lay a magnificent cedar wood chair, elaborately and delicately carved, and embellished with gold, c-plate 60. We now come to the third couch, flanked by its pair of queer composite animals with open mouths and teeth and tong of ivory. Resting on top of it in solitary state there was a large round-topped chest with ebony frame and panels painted white. This was originally the chest of under linen. It still contained a number of garments, loincloths, etc., most of them folded and rolled into neat bundles. Footnote. These, on our first entrance into the tomb, were mistaken for rolls of papyrus. End footnote. Below this couch stood another of the great artistic treasures of the tomb, perhaps the greatest so far taken out, a throne overlaid with gold from top to bottom and richly adorned with glass, fions and stone inlay, c-plate 24. Its legs, fashioned in feline form, was amounted by lions' heads, fascinating in their strength and simplicity. Magnificent crowned and winked serpents formed the arms, and between the bars which supported the back there were six protective cobras carved in wood, gilt and inlaid. It was the panel of the back, however, that was the chief glory of the throne, and I have no hesitation in claiming for it that it is the most beautiful thing that has yet been found in Egypt. A photograph, which without color gives but a very inadequate idea of its beauty, is shown on plate two. The scene is one of the halls of the palace, a room decorated with flower-garlanded pillars, frieze of urei, royal cobras, and dado of conventional recessed panelling. Through a hole in the roof the sun shoots down its life-giving protective rays. The king himself sits in an unconventional attitude upon a cushioned throne, his arm thrown carelessly across its back. Before him stands the girlish figure of the queen, putting apparently the last touches to his toilet. In one hand she holds a small jar of scent or ointment, and with the other she gently anoints his shoulder, or adds a touch of perfume to his collar. A simple, homely little composition, but how instinct with life and feeling it is, and with what a sense of movement. The coloring of the panel is extraordinarily vivid and effective. The face and other exposed portions of the bodies, both of king and queen, are of red glass, and the headdresses of brilliant chakois-like vials. The robes are of silver, dulled by age to an exquisite bloom. The crowns, collars, scarves, and other ornamental details of the panel are all inlaid, inlay of colored glass and pheons, of carnelian, and of a composition hitherto unknown, translucent fibrous calcite, underlaid with colored paste, in appearance for all the world like milfiori glass. As background we have the sheet gold with which the throne was covered. In its original state, with gold and silver fresh and new, the throne must have been an absolutely dazzling sight, too dazzling probably for the eye of a westerner, accustomed to drab skies and neutral tints. Now toned down a little by the tarnishing of the alloy, it presents a color scheme that is extraordinarily attractive and harmonious. Apart altogether from its artistic merit, the throne is an important historical document, the scenes upon it being actual illustrations of the political-religious vacillations of the rain. In original conception, witness the human arms on the sun-disc in the back panel, they are based on pure-tail-el-amarna-atun warship. The cartouches, however, are curiously mixed. In some of them the atun element has been erased and the amoon form substituted, whereas in other the atun remains unchallenged. It is curious, to say the least of it, that an object which bore such manifest signs of heresy upon it should be publicly buried in this, the stronghold of the amoon faith, and it is perhaps not without significance, that on this particular part of the throne there were remains of a linen wrapping. It would appear that Tutankhamun's return to the ancient faith was not entirely a matter of conviction. He may have thought the throne too valuable a possession to destroy and have kept it in one of the more private apartments of the palace. Or, again, it is possible that the alteration in the atun names was sufficient to appease the sectarians and that there was no need for secrecy. Upon the seat of the throne rested the footstool that originally stood before it, a stool of gilded wood and dark blue fiance, with panels on the top and sides on which were represented captives, bound and prone. This was a very common convention in the east, until I make thine enemies thy footstool, sings the salmist, and we may be sure that on certain occasions convention became actual fact. Before the couch there were two stools, one of plain wood painted white, the other of ebony, ivory and gold, its legs carved in the shapes of duck's heads, its top made in the semblance of leopard skin with claws and spots of ivory, the finest example we know of its kind. Behind it, resting against the south wall of the chamber, there were a number of important objects. First came a shrine-shaped box with double doors, fastened by shooting bolts of ebony. This was entirely cased with thick sheet gold, and on the gold, in delicate low relief, there were a series of little panels, shown on plate 68, depicting, in delightfully naive fashion, a number of episodes in the daily life of King and Queen. In all of these scenes the dominant note is that of friendly relationship between the husband and the wife, the unself-conscious friendliness that marks the Tel-El-Amarna school, and one would not be surprised to find that here, too, there had been a change in the cartouches from the atun to the amun. Within the shrine there was a pedestal, showing that it had originally contained a statuette. It may well have been a gold one, an object, unfortunately, too conspicuous for the plunderers to overlook. It also contained a necklace of enormous beads, gold, carnelian, green feldspar, and blue glass, to which was attached a large gold pendant in the shape of a very rare snake goddess, and considerable portions of the course led already referred to in our description of one of the earlier boxes. Beside this shrine there was a large Shawabti statuette of the king, carved, gilded, and painted, and a little farther along, peering out from behind the overturned body of a chariot, a statue of peculiar form cut sharp off at waste and elbows. This was exactly life-size, and its body was painted white in evident imitation of a shirt. There can be very little doubt that it represents a mannequin to which the king's robes and possibly his collars could be fitted, page 25. There were also in this same quarter of the chamber another toilet box and the scattered pieces of a gilt canopy or shrine. These last were of extremely light construction and were made to fit rapidly one to another. The canopy was probably a travelling one carried in the king's train wherever he went and set up at a moment's notice to shield him from the sun. The rest of the south wall and the whole of the east, as far as the entrance doorway, were taken up by the parts of no fewer than four chariots. As the photograph shows, they were heaped together in terrible confusion, the plunderers having evidently turned them this way and that in their endeavours to secure the more valuable portions of the gold decoration which covered them. Theirs is not the whole responsibility, however. The entrance passage was far too narrow to admit the ingress of complete chariots, so, to enable them to get into the chamber, the axles were deliberately sawn in two, the wheels dismounted and piled together, and the dismembered bodies placed by themselves. In the reassembling and restoration of these chariots we have a prodigious task ahead of us, but the result will be gorgeous enough to justify any amount of time that is bestowed upon them. From top to bottom they are covered with gold, every inch of which is decorated, either with embossed patterns and scenes upon the gold itself or with inlaid designs in coloured glass and stone. The actual woodwork of the chariots is in good condition and needs but little treatment, but with the horse trappings and other leather parts it is quite another story, the untanned leather having been affected by the damp and turned into a black, unpleasant looking blue. Fortunately these leather parts were, in almost every instance, plated with gold, and from this gold which is well preserved, we hope to be able to make a reconstruction of the harness. Mixed with the chariot parts there were a number of miscellaneous smaller objects, including alabaster jars, moisticks and bows, bead sandals, baskets, and a set of four horsehair fly whisks with lion head handles of gilded wood. We have now made a complete tour of the ante chamber, a fairly comprehensive one it seemed, and yet we find, by reference to our notes, that out of some six or seven hundred objects which it contained, we have mentioned the scant hundred. Nothing but a complete catalogue transcribed from our register cards would give an adequate idea of the extent of the discovery, and in the present volume that is naturally out of the question. We must confine ourselves here to a more or less summary description of the principal finds, and reserve a detailed study of the objects for later publications. It would be impossible in any case to attempt such an account at the present moment, for there are months, possibly years, of reconstructive work ahead of us, if the material is to be treated as it deserves. We must remember, too, that we have dealt so far with but a single chamber. There are inner chambers still untouched, and we hope to find among their contents treasures far surpassing those with which the present volume is concerned. End of Section 10. Section 11 of the Tomb of Tutankhamun. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Avayee in July 2019. The Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter. Chapter 8. Clearing the Antichamber. Clearing the objects from the Antichamber was like playing a gigantic game of spillikins. So crowded were they that it was a matter of extreme difficulty to move one without running serious risk of damaging others, and in some cases they were so inextricably tangled that an elaborate system of props and supports had to be devised to hold one object or a group of objects in place while another was being removed. See Plate 26. At such times life was a nightmare. One was afraid to move lest one should kick against a prop and bring the whole thing crashing down. Nor in many cases could one tell without experiment whether a particular object was strong enough to bear its own weight. Certain of the things were in beautiful condition, as strong as when they were first made, but others were in a most precarious state, and the problem constantly arose whether it would be better to apply preservative treatment to an object in situ or to wait until it could be dealt with in more convenient surroundings in the laboratory. The latter course was adopted whenever possible, but there were cases in which the removal of an object without treatment would have meant almost certain destruction. There were sandals, for instance, of patterned beadwork, of which the threading had entirely rotted away. As they lay on the floor of the chamber they looked in perfectly sound condition, but tried to pick one up and it crumbled at the touch, and all you had for your pains was a handful of loose, meaningless beads. This was a clear case for treatment on the spot. A spirit stove, some paraffin wax, an hour or two to harden, and the sandal could be removed intact and handled with the utmost freedom. The funerary bouquets again, see plate 27, without treatment as they stood they would have ceased to exist. Subjected to three or four sprayings of cellulite solution they bore removal well and were subsequently packed with scarcely any injury. Occasionally, particularly with the larger objects, it was found better to apply local treatment in the tomb just sufficient to ensure a safe removal to the laboratory where more drastic measures were possible. Each object presented a separate problem and, as I said before, there were cases in which only experiment could show what the proper treatment was to be. It was slow work, painfully slow, and nerve-wracking at that for one felt all the time a heavy weight of responsibility. Every excavator must, if he have any archaeological conscience at all. The things he finds are not his own property, to treat as he pleases or neglect as he chooses. They are a direct legacy from the past to the present age, he but the privileged intermediary through whose hands they come. And if, by carelessness, slackness or ignorance, he lessens the sum of knowledge that might have been obtained from them, he knows himself to be guilty of an archaeological crime of the first magnitude. Destruction of evidence is so painfully easy and yet so hopelessly irreparable. Tired or pressed for a time, you shirk a tedious piece of cleaning, or do it in a half-hearted, perfunctory sort of way, and you will perhaps have thrown away the one chance that will ever occur of gaining some important piece of knowledge. Too many people, unfortunately there are so-called archaeologists among them, are apparently under the impression that the object bought from a dealer's shop is just as valuable as one which has been found in actual excavation, and that until the object in question has been cleaned, entered in the books, marked with an accession number and placed in a tidy museum case, it is not a proper subject for study at all. There was never a greater mistake. Fieldwork is all important, and it is a sure and certain fact that if every excavation had been properly, systematically and conscientiously carried out, our knowledge of Egyptian archaeology would be at least fifty percent greater than it is. There are numberless derelict objects in the storerooms of our museums which would give us valuable information, could they but tell us Wednesday came, and box after box full of fragments, which a few notes at the time of finding would have rendered capable of reconstruction. Granting then that a heavy weight of responsibility must at all times rest upon the excavator, our own feelings on this occasion will easily be realized. It had been our privilege to find the most important collection of Egyptian antiquities that had ever seen the light, and it was for us to show that we were worthy of the trust. So many things there were that might go wrong. Danger of theft, for instance, was an ever-present anxiety. The whole countryside was a gawk with excitement about the tomb. All sorts of extravagant tales were current about the gold and jewels it contained, and, as past experience had shown, it was only too possible that there might be a serious attempt to raid the tomb by night. This possibility of robbery on a large scale was negative, so far as was humanely possible, by a complicated system of guarding. There being present in the valley, day and night, three independent groups of watchmen, each answerable to a different authority. The government antiquities guards, a squad of soldiers supplied by the Moudiere of Kenna, and a selected group of the most trustworthy of our own staff. In addition, we had a heavy wooden grill at the entrance to the passage, and a massive steel gate at the inner doorway, each secured by four padlocked chains. And, that there might never be any mistake about these letter, the keys were in the permanent charge of one particular member of the European staff, who never parted with them for a moment, even to lend them to a colleague. Petty or casual theft we guarded against by doing all the handling of the objects ourselves. Another, and perhaps an even greater cause for anxiety, was the condition of many of the objects. It was manifest with some of them that their very existence depended on careful manipulation and correct preservative treatment, and there were moments when our hearts were in our mouths. There were other worries too, visitors, for instance, but I shall have quite a little to say about them later, and I fear that by the time the anti-chamber was finished, our nerves, to say nothing of our tempers, were in an extremely ragged state. But here I am talking about finishing before we have even begun. We must make a fresh start. It is not time to lose our tempers yet. Obviously, our first and greatest need was photography. Before anything else was done, or anything moved, we must have a series of preliminary views, taken in panorama, to show the general appearance of the chamber. For lighting we had available two movable electric standards, giving three thousand candle-power, and it was with these that all the photographic work in the tomb was done. Exposures were naturally rather slow, but the light was beautifully even, much more so than would have been afforded by flashlight, a dangerous process in such a crowded chamber, or reflected sunlight which were the two possible alternatives. Fortunately for us there was an uninscribed and empty tomb close by, the Davis Cash Tomb of Anka Natun. This we got permission from the government to use as a dark room, and here Burton established himself. It was not too convenient in some ways, but it was worthwhile putting up with a little inconvenience to have a dark room so close, for in the case of experimental exposures he could slip across and develop without moving his camera out of position. Moreover these periodic dashes of his from tomb to tomb must have been a godsend to the crowd of curious visitors who kept vigil above the tomb, for there were many days during the winter in which it was the only excitement they had. Our next step, after these preliminary photographs had been taken, was to devise an efficient method of registering the contents of the chamber, for it would be absolutely essential later on that we should have already means of ascertaining the exact part of the tomb from which any particular object might have come. Naturally each object or closely allied group of objects would be given its own catalogue number, and would have that number securely attached to it when it was moved away from the chamber, but that was not enough for the number might not indicate position. So far as possible the numbers were to follow a definite order, beginning at the entrance doorway and working systematically round the chamber, but it was very certain that many objects now hidden would be found in the course of clearing and have to be numbered out of turn. We got over the difficulty by placing printed numbers on every object and photographing them in small groups. Every number showed in at least one of the photographs, so that by duplicating prints we were able to place with the notes of every single object in our filing cabinets a print which showed at a glance its actual position in the tomb. So far so good as far as the internal work in the tomb was concerned. Outside it we had a still more difficult problem to solve, that of finding adequate working and storage space for the objects as they were removed. Three things were absolutely essential. In the first place we must have plenty of room. There would be boxes to unpack, notes and measurements to be taken, repairs to be carried out, experiments with various preservative materials to be made and obviously we should require considerable table accommodation as well as ordinary storage space. Then secondly we must have a place that we could render thief proof, for as things were moved the laboratory would come to be almost as great a source of danger as the tomb itself. Lastly we must have seclusion. This may seem a less obvious need than the others, but we foresaw, and the winter's happenings proved us to be right, that unless we were out of sight of visitors' ordinary haunts we should be treated as a sideshow and should be unable to get any work done at all. Eventually we solved the problem by getting permission from the government to take over the tomb of Setai II, number 15 in the valley catalogue. This certainly fulfilled the third of our requirements. It is not a tomb ordinarily visited by tourists, and its position, tucked away in a corner at the extreme end of the valley, was exactly suitable to our purpose. No other tomb lay beyond it, so without causing inconvenience to anyone we could close to ordinary traffic the path that led to it and thus secure complete privacy for ourselves. It had other advantages too. For one thing it was so well sheltered by overhanging cliffs that at no time of day did the sun ever penetrate its doors, thus remaining comparatively cool even in the hottest of summer weather. There was also a considerable amount of open space in front of it, and this be utilized later as an open-air photographic studio and a carpenter's shop. We were somewhat restricted as to space, for the tomb was so long and narrow that all our work had to be done at the upper end of it, the lower part being useless except for storage purposes. It had also the disadvantage of being rather a long way from the scene of operations. These, however, were but minor drawbacks compared with the positive advantages which the tomb offered. We had a reasonable amount of room, we had privacy, and safety we ensured by putting up a many padlocked steel gate, one and a half tons in weight. One other point with regard to the laboratory work the reader should bear in mind. We were five hundred miles from anywhere, and if we were in short of preservative materials there might be considerable delay before we could secure a fresh supply. The Cairo shops furnished most of our needs, but there were certain chemicals of which we exhausted the entire Cairo stock before the winter was over, and other things which in the first instance could only be procured in England. Constant care and forethought were therefore necessary to prevent shortage and the consequent holding up of the work. By December 27 all our preparations were made and we were ready to make a start on the actual removal of the objects. We worked on a regular system of division of labour. Burton came first with his photographs of the numbered groups of objects. Hall and Hauser followed with their scale plan of the chamber, every object being drawn on the plan in projection. Calendar and I did the preliminary noting and clearing and superintended the removal of the objects to the laboratory, and there Mace and Lucas received them and were responsible for the detail noting, mending and preservation. The first object to be removed was the painted wooden casket. Then working from north to south and thus putting off the evil day when we should have to tackle the complicated tangle of chariots, we gradually disencumbered the great animal couches of the objects which surrounded them. Each object, as it was removed, was placed upon a padded wooden stretcher and securely fastened to it with bandages. Enormous numbers of these stretchers were required. For, to avoid double handling, they were in almost every case left permanently with the object and not reused. From time to time, when a sufficient number of stretchers had been filled, about once a day, on an average, a convoy was made up and dispatched under guard to the laboratory. This was the moment for which the crowd of watchers above the tomb were waiting. Out came the reporter's notebooks. Click, click went the cameras in every direction and a lane had to be cleared for the procession to pass through. I suppose more films were wasted in the valley last winter than in any other corresponding period of time since cameras were first invented. We in the laboratory had occasion once for a piece of old mummy cloth for experimental purposes. It was sent up to us in a stretcher and it was photographed eight times before it got to us. The removal and transport of the smaller objects was a comparatively simple matter, but it was quite otherwise when it came to the animal couches and the chariots. Each of the former was constructed in four pieces, the two animal sides, the bed proper and the base to which the animal's feet were socketed. They were manifestly much too large to negotiate the narrow entrance passage and must have been brought into the tomb in sections and assembled there. Indeed strips of newer gold round the joints, show where the damage they had incurred in handling, had been made good after deposition. It was obvious that to get the couches out of the tomb we must take them apart again. No easy matter, for after three thousand years the bronze hooks had naturally set tight in the staples and would not budge. We got them apart eventually and with scarcely any damage, but it took no fewer than five of us to do it. Two supported the central part of the couch, two were responsible for the well-being of the animals, while the fifth, working from underneath, eased up the hooks, one after the other with a lever. Even when taken apart there was none too much room to get the side animals through the passage and they needed very careful handling. However, we got them all out without accident and packed them straight into boxes we had in readiness for them just outside the entrance to the tomb. Most difficult of all to move were the chariots, which had suffered considerably from the treatment to which they had been subjected. It had not been possible to get them into the tomb whole in the first instance, for they were too wide for the entrance passage, and the wheels had had to be removed and the axles sawn off at one end. They had evidently been moved out of position and turned upside down by the plunderers, and in the subsequent tidying up the parts had been loosely stacked one upon another. Egyptian chariots are of very light construction, and the rough usage which they had undergone made these extremely difficult to handle. There was another complication, in that the parts of the harness were made of undressed leather. Now this, if exposed to humanity, speedily resolves itself into glue, and that was what had happened here. The black glutinous mass which represented the trappings having run down over everything and dropped, not only on the other parts of the chariots themselves, but upon other objects which had nothing to do with them. Thus the leather has almost entirely perished, but fortunately, as I have already stated, we have for reconstructional purposes the gold ornamentation with which it was covered. Seven weeks in all it took us to clear the anti-chamber and thankfully indeed we were when it was finished, and that without any kind of disaster befalling us. One scare we had. For two or three days the sky was very black, and it looked as though we were in for one of the heavy storms that occasionally visit thieves. On such occasions rain comes down in torrents, and if the storm persists for any length of time the whole bed of the valley becomes a raging flood. No power on earth could have kept our tomb from being flooded under these conditions, but fortunately, though there must have been heavy rain somewhere in the district, we escaped with but a few drops. Certain correspondents indulged in some highly imaginative writing on the subject of this threatened storm. As a result of this and other distorted news we received a somewhat cryptic cable sent presumably by a zealous student of the occult. It ran, in the case of further trouble, poor milk, wine and honey on the threshold. Unfortunately we had neither wine nor honey with us, so were unable to carry out the directions. In spite of our negligence, however, we escaped the further trouble. Perhaps we were given absent treatment. In the course of our clearing we naturally accumulated a good deal of evidence with regard to the activities of the original tomb plunderers, and this will be as good a place as any to give a statement of the conclusions at which we arrived. In the first place we know from the ceilings on the outer doorway that all the plundering was done within a very few years after King's burial. We also know that the plunderers entered the tomb at least twice. There were broken scattered objects on the floor of the entrance passage and staircase, proving that at the time of the first attempt the passageway between the inner and the outer sealed doors was empty. It is, I suppose, just possible that this preliminary plundering was done immediately after the funeral ceremonies. Thereafter the passage was entirely filled with stones and rubbish, and it was through a tunnel excavated in the upper left-hand corner of this filling that the subsequent attempts were made. At this final attempt the thieves had penetrated into all the chambers of the tomb, but their tunnel was only a narrow one, and clearly they could not have got away with any except the smaller objects. Now as to internal evidence of the damage they had been able to effect. To begin with, there was a strange difference between the respective states in which the anti-chamber anti-annex had been left. In the latter, as we have described in the preceding chapter, everything was in confusion, and there was not a vacant inch of floor space. It was quite evident that the plunderers had turned everything topsy-turvy, and that the present state of the chamber was precisely that in which they had left it. The anti-chamber was quite different. There was a certain amount of confusion, it was true, but it was orderly confusion, and had it not been for the evidence of plundering afforded by the tunnel and the resealed doorways, one might have imagined at first view that there never had been any plundering, and that the confusion was due to oriental carelessness at the time of the funeral. However, when we commenced clearing, it quickly became manifest that this comparative orderliness was due to a process of hasty tidying up, and that the plunderers had been just as busy here as they had in the annex. Parts of the same object were found in different quarters of the chamber, objects that should have been in boxes were lying on the floor or upon the couches. On the lid of one of the boxes there was a collar, intact but crumpled. Behind the chariots, in an entirely inaccessible place, there was a box lid, the box to which it belonged being far away near the innermost door. Quite clearly the plunderers had scattered things here just as they had done in the annex, and someone had come after them and rearranged the chamber. Later, when we came to unpack the boxes, we found still more circumstantial evidence. One, the long white box at the north end of the chamber, was half full of sticks, bows and arrows, and above, stuffed tightly in upon them, there was a mixed collection of the king's underlinen. Yet the metal points had been broken from all the arrows, and a few were found dropped upon the floor. Other sticks and bows that obviously belonged to this box were likewise scattered in the chamber. In another box there were a number of decorated robes bundled together and thrust in anyhow, and mixed with them several pairs of sandals. So tightly had the contents of the box been stuffed, that the metal tothong of one of the sandals had pierced right through its own leather sole, and penetrated that of another, which lay beneath it. In still another box, jewellery and tiny statuettes had been packed on top of firen's libation vases. Others, again, were half empty or contained the mere jumble of odds and ends of cloth. There was, moreover, certain evidence that this confusion was due to hasty repacking and had nothing to do with the original arrangement of the boxes. For on the lids of several there were neat little dockets stating clearly what the contents should have been, and in only one case did the docket bear any sort of relation to the contents as they actually were. This particular docket called for 17 unknown objects of lapis lazuli colour. Within the box there were 16 libation vases of dark blue firen's, and the 17th was on the floor of the chamber some distance away. Eventually, in our final study of the material, these dockets will be of great value. We shall be able, in a great many cases, to portion out the objects to the boxes which originally contained them and shall know exactly what is missing. The best evidence of all was supplied by a very elaborate garment of firen's, gold and inlay, comprising in one piece crosslet, colour and pectoral. The largest portion of it was found in the box which contained the firen's vases just mentioned. The pectoral and most of the collar were tucked away in the small gold shrine, and isolated pieces of it turned up in several other boxes, and were scattered all over the floor. There is nothing at present to show which of the boxes it originally belonged to, or even that it actually belonged to any of them. It is quite possible that the plunderers brought it from the innermost chamber to the bitter light of the anti-chamber, and there deliberately pulled it to pieces. From the facts at our disposal, we can now reconstruct the whole sequence of events. A breach was first made in the upper left-hand corner of the first sealed door, just large enough to admit a man, and then the tunneling began, the excavators working in a chain, passing the stones and baskets of earth back from one to another. Seven or eight hours' work might suffice to bring them to the second sealed door, a hole in this, and they were through. Then in the semi-darkness began a mad scramble for loot. Gold was their natural quarry, but it had to be in portable form, and it must have maddened them to see it glinting all around them on plated objects which they could not move and had not time to strip. Nor, in the dim light in which they were working, could they always distinguish between the real and the false, and many an object which they took for solid gold was found on closer examination to be but gilded wood, and was contemptuously thrown aside. The boxes were treated in very drastic fashion. Without exception they were dragged out into the centre of the room and ransacked, their contents being strewn about all over the floor. What valuables they found in them and made away with we may never know, but their search can have been but hurried and superficial, for many objects of solid gold were overlooked. One very valuable thing we know they did secure. Within the small gold shrine there was a pedestal of gilded wood made for a statuette with the imprint of the statuette's feet still marked upon it, plate 29. The statuette itself was gone, and there can be very little doubt that it was a solid gold one, probably very similar to the gold statuette of Tothmes III in the image of Amun in the Carnarvan collection. Next, the anti-chamber having been thoroughly worked over, the thieves turned their attention to the annex. Knocking a hole in its doorway, just big enough to let them through, and overturning and ransacking its contents quite as thoroughly as they had done those of the outer chamber. Then, and apparently not until then, they directed themselves towards the burial chamber, and made a very small hole in the sealed doorway which screened it from the anti-chamber. How much damage they did there we shall know in due time, but so far as we can tell at present it was less than in the outer chambers. They may indeed have been disturbed at this particular stage in the proceedings, and there is a very interesting little piece of evidence that seems to bear the theory out. It may be remembered that in our description of the objects in the anti-chamber, chapter 7, we mentioned that one of the boxes contained a handful of solid gold rings tied up in a fold of cloth. They were just the things to attract a thief, for their intrinsic value was considerable, and yet they could very easily be hidden away. Now every visitor to Egypt will remember that if you give money to a fellach, his ordinary proceeding will be to undo a portion of his hedge-hole, put the coins in a fold of it, twist it round two or three times to hold the coins tight in place, and make it finally secure by looping the bag thus formed into a knot. These rings had been secured in exactly the same way, the same loose fold in the cloth, the same twisting round to form the bag, and the same loose knot. This unquestionably was the work of one of the thieves. It was not his hedge-hole that he had used. The fellach of the period wore no such garment, but one of the king's scarves, which he had picked up in the tomb, and he had fastened them thus for convenience in carrying. Plate 30 How comes it then that the precious bundle of rings was left in the tomb and not carried off? It was the very last thing that a thief would be likely to forget, and in case of sudden alarm it was not heavy enough to impede his flight, however hurried that might be. We are almost forced to the conclusion that the thieves were either trapped within the tomb or overtaken in their flight, traced in any case with some of the plunder still upon them. If this be so, it explains the presence of certain other pieces of jewelry and gold work too valuable to leave and too big to overlook. In any case, the fact that a robbery had been committed got to the ears of the officials concerned, and they came to the tomb to investigate and make the damage good. For some reason they seem to have been in almost as great a hurry as the thieves, and their work of reparation was sadly scamped. The annex they left severely alone, not even taking the trouble to fill up the hole in the doorway. In the anti-chamber, the smaller objects with which the floor was covered were swept up, bundled together, and jammed—there is no other word—back into the boxes, no attempt being made to sort the material or to put the objects into the boxes which had been originally intended for them. Some of the boxes were packed tight, others were left almost empty, and on one of the couches there were deposited two large bundles of cloth in which a miscellaneous collection of material had been wrapped. Nor even was all the small material gathered up. The sticks, bows, and arrows were left in scattered groups. On the lid of a box were thrown a crumpled collar of pendants and a pad of finance rings, and on the floor, one on one side of the chamber and one on the other, there was a pair of fragile beadwork sandals. The larger objects were pushed carelessly back against the walls, or stacked one upon another. Certainly no respect was shown, either to the objects themselves or to the king whose property they were, and one wonders why, if they tied it up so badly, they took the trouble to tie the up at all. One thing we must credit them with—they did not do any pilfering, as they might easily have done, on their own account. We can be reasonably sure of that, from the valuable objects, small and easily concealed, which they repacked into the boxes. The anti-chamber finished, so far at least as they intended to finish it, the hole in the innermost doorway was refilled, plastered, and stamped with the royal necropolis seal. Then, retracing their steps, they closed and sealed the anti-chamber door, filled up the plunderer's tunnel through the passage-blocking, and made good the outer doorway. What further steps they took to prevent repetition of the crime we do not know, but probably they buried the whole entrance to the tomb deep out of sight. Better political conditions in the country might have prevented it for a time, but in the long run nothing but ignorance of its whereabouts could have saved it from further attempts at plundering, and very certain it is that, between the time of this reclosing and that of our discovery, no hand had touched the seals upon the door. Archaeology under the limelight is a new and rather bewildering experience for most of us. In the past we have gone about our business happily enough, intensely interested in it ourselves, but not expecting other folk to be more than tepidly polite about it. And now, all of a sudden, we find the world takes an interest in us, an interest so intense and so avid for details that special correspondents at large salaries have to be sent to interview us, report our every movement, and hide round corners to surprise a secret out of us. It is, as I said, a little bewildering for us, not to say embarrassing, and we wonder sometimes just exactly how and why it has all come about. We may wonder, but I think it would puzzle anyone to give an exact answer to the question. One must suppose that at the time the discovery was made, the general public was in a state of profound boredom with news of reparations, conferences, and mandates, and craved for some new topic of conversation. The idea of buried treasure too is one that appeals to most of us. Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, it is quite certain that, once the initial times this patch had been published, no power on earth could shelter us from the light of publicity that beat down upon us. We were helpless and had to make the best of it. The embarrassing side of it was soon brought home to us in no uncertain manner. Telegrams poured in from every quarter of the globe. Within a week or two, letters began to follow them, a deluge of correspondence that has persisted ever since. Amazing literature, some of it. Beginning with letters of congratulation, it went on to offers of assistance, ranging all the way from tomb-planning to personal valeting, requests for souvenirs, even a few grains of sand from above the tomb would be received so thankfully. Fantastic money offers, from moving picture rights to copyright on fashions of dress, advice on the preservation of antiquities, and the best method of appeasing evil spirits and elementals. Press clippings, tracts, would be facetious communications, stern denunciations of sacrilege, claims of relationship. Surely you must be the cousin who lived in Camberwell in 1893 and whom we have never heard of since, and so on and so on. Fatua's communications of discord came tumbling in upon us at the rate of 10 or 15 a day, right through the winter. There is a whole sack full of them and an interesting psychological study they would make, if one had the time to give to them. What, for instance, is one to make of a person who solemnly inquires whether the discovery of the tomb throws any light on the alleged Belgian atrocities in the Congo? Next came our friends, the newspaper correspondents, who flocked to the valley in large numbers and devoted all their social gifts, and they were considerable, towards dispelling any lingering remains of loneliness or desert boredom that we might still have left to us. They certainly did their work with some thoroughness, for each owed it to himself and to his paper to get daily information, and we in Egypt were delighted when we heard Lord Carnarvon's decision to place the whole matter of publicity in the hands of the times. Another, and perhaps the most serious of all the embarrassments that notoriety brought upon us, was the fatal attraction the tomb had for visitors. It was not that we wanted to be secretive, nor had any objection to visitors as such, as a matter of fact there are few things more pleasant than showing one's work to appreciative people, but as the situation developed it became very clear that, unless something was done to discourage it, we should spend the entire season playing showmen and never get any work done at all. It was surely a new chapter in the history of the valley. Tourist visitors it had always known, but here too far it had been a business proceeding, and not a garden party. Armed with guidebooks they had conscientiously visited as many tombs as time or their dragoman would allow them, bustled through their lunch, and been hurried off to a further depot of sightseeing elsewhere. This winter dragoman and time schedules were disregarded alike, and many of the ordinary sights were left unvisited. The tomb drew like a magnet. From a very early hour in the morning the pilgrimage began. Visitors arrived on donkeys, in sand carts and in two horse cabs, and proceeded to make themselves at home in the valley for the day. Round the top of the upper level of the tomb there was a low wall, and here they each staked out a claim and established themselves, waiting for something to happen. Sometimes it did, more often it did not, but it seemed to make no difference to their patience. There they would sit the whole morning, reading, talking, knitting, photographing the tomb and each other, quite satisfied if at the end they could get a glimpse of anything. Great was the excitement always when word was passed up that something was to be brought out of the tomb. Books and knitting were thrown aside, and the whole battery of cameras was cleared for action and directed at the entrance passage. We were really alarmed sometimes, lest a whole wall should give way, and a crowd of visitors be precipitated into the mouth of the tomb. From above it must really have been an imposing spectacle to see strange objects like the great guilt animals from the couches emerging gradually from the darkness into the light of day. We who were bringing them up were much too anxious about their safety in the narrow passage to think about such things ourselves, but a preliminary gasp and then a quick buzz of exclamations brought home to us the effect it had upon the watchers above. To these, the casual visitors who contented themselves with watching from the top, there could be no objection, and whenever possible we brought things out of the tomb without covers for their special benefit. Our real embarrassment was caused by the numbers of people who, for one reason or another, had to be shown over the tomb itself. This was a difficulty that came upon us so gradually and insidiously that for a long time we, none of us, realized what the inevitable result must be, but in the end it brought the work practically to a standstill. At the beginning we had, of course, the formal inspections of the departmental officials concerned. These naturally we welcomed. In the same way we were always glad to receive other archaeologists. They had a right to visit the tomb, and we were delighted to show them everything there was to be seen. So far there was no difficulty, and there never would be any difficulty. It was with the letters of introduction that the trouble began. They were written literally in hundreds by our friends. We never realized before how many we had, by our friends' friends, by people who had a real claim upon us, and by people who had less than none. For diplomatic reasons, by ministers or departmental officials in Cairo, to say nothing of self-written introductions, which either bluntly demanded admittance to the tomb, or showed quite clearly and ingeniously how unreasonable it would be to refuse them. One ingenious person even intercepted a telegraph boy and tried to make the delivery of the message an excuse for getting in. The desire to visit the tomb became an obsession with the tourist, and in the Luxor hotels the question of ways and means became a regular topic of conversation. Those who had seen the tomb boasted of the fact openly, and to many of those who had not, it became a matter of personal pride to effect an introduction somehow. To such lengths were things carried that certain tourist agencies in America actually advertised a trip to Egypt to see the tomb. All this, as may be imagined, put us in a very awkward position. There were certain visitors whom for diplomatic reasons we had to admit, and others whom we could not refuse without giving serious offence, not only to themselves, but to the third parties whose introduction they brought. Where were we to draw the line? Obviously something had to be done, for, as I said, the whole of the work in the tomb was being rapidly brought to a standstill. Eventually we solved the difficulty by running away. Ten days after the opening of the sealed door we filled up the tomb, locked and barred the laboratory, and disappeared for a week. This made a complete break. When we resumed work, the tomb itself was irrevocably buried, and we made it a fixed rule that no visits were to be made to the laboratory at all. Now this whole question of visitors is a matter of some delicacy. We have already gotten to a good deal of hot water over it, and have been accused of lack of consideration, ill manners, selfishness, boorishness, and quite a number of other things. So perhaps it would be as well to make a clear statement of the difficulties involved. These are two. In the first place, the presence of a number of visitors creates serious danger to the objects themselves, danger that we, who are responsible for them, have no right to let them undergo. How could it be otherwise? The tomb is small and crowded, and sooner or later, it actually happened more than once last year, a false step or hasty movement on the part of a visitor will do some piece of absolutely irreparable damage. It is not the fault of the visitor, for he does not and cannot know the exact position or condition of every object. It is our fault for letting him be there. The unfortunate part of it is that the more interested and the more enthusiastic the visitor is, the more likely he is to be the cause of damage. He gets excited, and in his enthusiasm over one object, he is very liable to step back into or knock against another. Even if no actual damage is caused, the passage of large parties of visitors through the tomb stirs up the dust, and that in itself is bad for the objects. That is the first and obvious danger. The second, due to the loss of actual working time that visitors cause, is not so immediately apparent, but it is in some ways even more serious. This will seem a terribly exaggerated view to the individual visitor, who will wonder what difference the half hour that he or she consumed could make to the whole season's work. Perfectly true, so far as that particular half hour is concerned, but what of the other nine visitors or groups of visitors who come on the same day? By strict arithmetic he and they have occupied five hours of our working day. In actual fact it is considerably more than five, for in the short intervals between visitors it is impossible to settle down to any serious piece of work. To all intents and purposes a complete day has been lost. Now, there were many days last season in which we actually did have ten parties of visitors, and if we had given way to every demand and avoided any possibility of giving offence, there would not have been a day in which we did not far exceed the ten. In other words, there would have been whole weeks at a time in which no work was done at all. As it actually worked out last winter, we gave visitors a quarter of our working season. This resulted in our having to prolong our work into the hot weather a whole months longer than we had intended, and the heat of the valley in May is not a thing to look forward to with equanimity, and is anything but inducive to good work. There was much more at stake, however, than our own personal inconvenience. There was actual danger for the objects themselves. Delicate antiquities are extremely sensitive to any change of temperature, and have to be watched most carefully. In the present case the change from the close atmosphere of the anti-chamber to the variable temperature outside, and the dry airiness of the tomb we used as a laboratory, was a very appreciable one, and certain of the objects were affected by it. It was extremely important that preservatives should be applied at the very first possible moment, and in some cases there was need of experimental treatment, which had to be watched very carefully. The danger of constant interruption is obvious, and I need not labour the point. What would a chemist think if you asked him to break off a delicate experiment to show you round his laboratory? What would be the feelings of a surgeon if you interrupted him in the middle of an operation? And what about the patient? For the matter of that, what would a businessman say, what wouldn't he say, if he had a succession of ten parties of visitors in the course of the morning, each expecting to be shown all over the office? Yet surely the claims of archaeology for consideration are just as great as those of any other form of scientific research, or even, dare I say it, of that of the sacred science of money making itself. Why, because we carry on our work in unfrequented regions instead of in a crowded city, are we to be considered childish for objecting to constant interruptions? I suppose the reason really is that in popular opinion archaeology is not work at all. Excavation is a sort of super-tourist amusement carried out with the excavator's own money if he is rich enough, or with other people's money if he can persuade them to subscribe it, and all he has to do is to enjoy life in a beautiful winter climate and pay a gang of natives to find things for him. It is the dilettante archaeologist, the man who rarely does any work with his own hands, but is often as not as absent when the actual discovery is made, who is largely responsible for this opinion. The serious excavator's life is frequently monotonous, and, as I hope to show in the next chapter, quite as hard-working as that of any other member of society. I have written more than I intended on this subject, but really it is a very serious matter for us. We have an opportunity in this tomb such as no archaeologists ever had before, but if we are to take full advantage of it, and failure to do so will earn for us the just execration of every future generation of archaeologists, it is absolutely essential that we be left to carry on the work without interruption. It is not as if our visitors were all keen on archaeology, or even mildly interested in it. Too many of them are attracted by mere curiosity, or even worse, by a desire to visit a tomb because it is the thing to do. They want to be able to talk at large about it to their friends at home, or crow over less fortunate tourists who have not managed to secure an introduction themselves. Can you imagine anything more maddening when you are completely absorbed in a difficult problem than to give up half an hour of your precious time to a visitor who has pulled every conceivable kind of wire to gain admittance, and then to hear him say quite audibly as he goes away, oh, there wasn't much to see after all. That actually happened last winter, and more than once. In the coming season there will in any case be much less for visitors to see. It will be absolutely impossible to get into the burial chamber, for every available inch of space will be occupied by scaffolding, and the removal of the shrine, section by section, will be much too ticklish in operation to admit of interruptions. In the laboratory we propose to deal with only one object at a time, which will be packed and got rid of as soon as we have finished with it. Six cases of objects from the tomb are already on exhibition in the Cairo Museum, and we would earnestly beg visitors to Egypt to content themselves with these, and with what they can see from the outside of the tomb, and not to set their hearts on getting into the tomb itself. Those who are genuinely interested in archaeology for its own sake will be the first to realize that the request is a reasonable one. The others, the idly curious who look on the tomb as a sideshow, and Tutankhamun as a mere topic of conversation, have no rights in the matter and need no consideration. Whatever our discoveries next season may be, we trust that we may be allowed to deal with them in a proper and dignified manner.